The latest police documents publicly released by the University of Michigan in the United States reveal that Chinese researcher Danhao Wang, who committed suicide in March, had been interviewed by two U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) personnel the day before his death.
The documents disclose details of the meeting between the two parties and Wang’s activities the day before his death, but the reasons why DHS approached him and the content of their conversation remain unclear.
According to reports from the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News on Thursday, September 17, police documents obtained by the two media outlets show that on the morning of March 18 around 8 a.m., two DHS personnel arrived at Wang’s rented residence in Ann Arbor. The names and titles of the two individuals are redacted in the public documents.
One DHS personnel reportedly spoke with Wang outside the house for about 10 minutes. Due to the cold weather that day, she suggested ending the conversation and setting another time to continue, but Wang expressed a desire to keep talking. They later headed to a local coffee shop separately.
The face-to-face meeting at the coffee shop lasted about 30 minutes. The police report stated that Wang “left on his own” afterward and voluntarily mentioned that he would be willing to answer further questions “if DHS had other issues in the future.”
However, the publicly disclosed documents do not specify the reasons why DHS questioned Wang, nor do they reveal the content of their conversation.
The following day, on March 19 from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., Wang met with Ann Arbor attorney John Minock. Minock specializes in criminal defense work. He confirmed to the Detroit Free Press that he had spoken with Wang but cited attorney-client privilege as the reason for not disclosing the conversation’s content.
At 1:05 p.m., the University of Michigan’s license plate recognition system recorded Wang’s vehicle. The police documents did not detail his whereabouts in the following hours.
Around 10:30 p.m. that evening, the landlord saw Wang leave the residence through the back door for the last time. The police report stated that he “appeared to have cried, for reasons unknown.”
Approximately 20 minutes later, Wang was spotted in the third-floor lounge area of the George G. Brown Memorial Laboratories at the University of Michigan. He was conversing with a friend in the hallway, as several people were present at the time.
The friend told police that Wang looked “strange,” with “red eyes and not his usual self.”
According to the police report, Wang mentioned to his friend that DHS had questioned him and stated that he had consulted a lawyer, who told him, “This matter is not serious.”
The friend said that they began to ask Wang about a research paper when suddenly, “Wang ran, flipped over the glass railing on the third floor, and jumped to the second floor.”
Wang lost consciousness after the fall, suffered head injuries, and was rushed to the University of Michigan Medical Center, where he passed away approximately two hours later. The autopsy report indicated that he died from blunt force trauma to the head, neck, and lower limbs, with the manner of death later ruled as suicide by the forensic pathologist.
At the time of his death at age 31, Danhao Wang was an Assistant Research Scientist in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Michigan.
When the incident came to light in April, it was already known that Wang had been questioned by federal authorities, but the institutional identities were not confirmed publicly until the latest documents revealed that it was DHS.
At the time of his death, the U.S. government was ramping up efforts to scrutinize foreign influence on American universities. The University of Michigan has faced federal scrutiny in recent years over disclosure issues related to foreign funding, with several Chinese students also facing prosecution in cases involving alleged smuggling of biological materials.
Prior reporting by The Epoch Times had also covered a former Chinese student from U-Mich being indicted for making false statements to federal law enforcement and concealing background information related to a Chinese military drone project.
However, the latest police documents have yet to establish a definitive causal link between DHS’s interaction with Danhao Wang and his subsequent suicide.